Prime minister at the zenith of the British Empire, devout Christian--with a penchant for ministering to pretty prostitutes--and Homeric scholar, William Gladstone left one of the most complete diaries produced in the Victorian Age, an almost daily record spanning seven decades. Generally speaking, what cannot be known of Gladstone cannot be known of anyone. A lesson on the limits of biography.

I do not enter on interior matters. It is so easy to write, but to write honestly nearly impossible.

--William Gladstone, December 7, 1896

No political figure of the nineteenth century has been more carefully scrutinized than William Gladstone, four times prime minister of Great Britain. His legislative and political achievements were epic, affecting millions of his countrymen and drawing copious evaluation from the political press. He left hundreds of thousands of documents of every kind, written during every period of life. He was routinely remembered by memorialists. And he composed one of the most remarkable of all diaries, daily recording, for 70 years, the names of almost every person he met or wrote to, the titles of most everything he read, and the course of his daily business.

Yet the more coherent the external circumstances of Gladstone's life, the more problematic becomes our knowledge of his interior life. Publication of the admirable "Gladstone Diaries with Cabinet Minutes and Prime-Ministerial Correspondence" (M. R. D. Foot and H. C. G. Matthew, eds., 14 vols., Oxford University Press, 1968-94) has put within easy reach the full range of surrounding influences that constantly and in conjunction with one another shaped his motivations, pleasures, and desires. Still, Gladstone's psychology remains almost as resistant to explanation today as when he was trying, with limited success, to make sense of it for himself.

Born in 1809, much was expected of young William by a mother concerned with the state of his soul and a father eager for his financial success. Following his father's advice and renouncing his avowed desire to don the Anglican cassock, Gladstone instead became a member of Parliament in 1832. Principled and high-strung at 22, he did not seem suited to the brazen world of political compromise and maneuver. He was ambitious and extraordinarily industrious, however, and his brilliant oratory made it impossible for men to ignore him. Too, he had a remarkable gift for adjusting his principles to the possibilities of the moment without actually losing them. He rose quickly through the political ranks.

Like most great men, Gladstone had an abiding sense of his own importance. He entered the British Cabinet in 1843 and two years later dramatically threatened his career by resigning over the government's increase of an educational grant to the Roman Catholic college of Maynooth, Ireland. As a matter of principle, he felt this to be necessary, for he had in "The State in Its Relations with the Church" (1838) publicly maintained that the unity of church and state, of essential importance, was in imminent danger from both Romanists and Erastians (who argued for the sovereignty of the civil government over the church). Still, demonstrating that great gift for reconciling principle and self-interest, after a year of anguished doubt Gladstone voted for the measure upon which he had resigned, arguing its administrative necessity.

He was first appointed chancellor of the exchequer in 1852 and eventually rose to be prime minister (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94). His first ministry was a model of legislative success, responsible for a series of modernizing reforms, including disestablishment of the Irish Church, abolition of the purchase of army commissions, introduction of the secret ballot, and establishment of a nationwide system of primary education. His second, third, and fourth ministries were more often defined by foreign affairs and the intractable question of Irish Home Rule. Here he was less successful, but the political contests in which he led the Liberal Party were vivid, heroic, and full of drama.

Gladstone brought to the largeness of his achievements a peculiar and fascinating manner that made him difficult to fathom. Often a champion of Nonconformist politics, he was himself an ardent high churchman and ritualist, who welcomed prayers for the dead. He was honest to the core but never uttered an important statement without qualification. A model of moral rectitude, he risked his soul and reputation by entertaining prostitutes--with a proper view toward saving their souls. What would have been damaging inconsistencies in a smaller man simply added to his stature as the mythical "People's William," the "Grand Old Man" who was embraced as much for his contradictions as for his achievements.

Gladstone was adored by millions. Persistent and virulent attacks by those who thought him mad only heightened the veneration of his followers. He was one of the earliest political figures of the British establishment to undertake the provincial speaking tours that, before the prevalence of urban sport, electrified working-class audiences. But the masses were elevated as well as entertained, for Gladstone's very presence demonstrated his regard for them. Thousands took day trips to his estate at Hawarden, where the great man, unashamed of labor, stripped to the waist and felled a tall ash or a gnarled oak. At home, daytrippers proudly displayed the chips of Gladstone's industry, attracting scores of admiring neighbors. Critics saw in Gladstone's complicity a deliberate posturing for an age of advertisement. He nevertheless enjoyed a remarkable reputation with the public for having the common touch.

Innovative budgets, landmark legislation, commanding oratory, extensive networking, and sheer longevity all made Gladstone a protean figure. An earnest style enhanced the perception of his achievement. But his greatness has always been seen as something more than political. He was, in an age of political reverence and religious doubt, the great exemplar of the Victorian Christian ideal: serious, moral, diligent, and hardworking, with a keen sense of justice. Though few could match the ideal, the earnest Briton applauded a man who stood by the Bible in times of adversity, and who genuinely believed that "change of labor" was "the healthiest form of recreation."

Rapid growth in literacy and the proliferation of newspapers and periodicals enabled the majority of his countrymen to know firsthand something of Gladstone's division of labor. His thousands of speeches were reported verbatim, and amid the fullest political career of the nineteenth century he published more than 100 books and articles, most of which dealt with Homeric and Christian themes (in that order). And he always maintained that politics was but a poor adjunct to God's spiritual activity in the world.

The Conservative prime minister Lord Salisbury eulogized Gladstone as "a Great Christian statesman," whose principles had exercised a high and salutary influence upon the nation. Scarcely any biographer has failed to note his Christian example. In the dozens of biographical accounts that appeared up to and around the time of Gladstone's death, the panegyric of those who knew him only from a distance knew no bounds. This tendency to see Gladstone larger than life may be glimpsed in the fulsome title of "Thomas Handford's memorial biography" (1898):

William Ewart Gladstone

Life and Public Services

The Statesman Incorruptible

The Patriot Undaunted

The Reformer Unflinching

The Friend of All Humanity, and by All Humanity Beloved.

"Statesman, yet friend to truth"--Pope

With Pleasant Recollections of Happy Service in the Ranks of the Great Leader

Most of those who had experienced Gladstone's "hard political professionalism" were more restrained, but hardly less favorable. James Bryce, eminent historian and younger cabinet colleague, observed in the same year that "religious feeling, coupled with a system of firm dogmatic beliefs, was the mainspring of his whole career, a guiding light in perplexities, a source of strength in adverse fortune." John Morley, Gladstone's official biographer (1903) and an open agnostic, stood equally in awe of the man who "strove to use all the powers of his own genius and the powers of the state for moral purposes and religious." In our own more secular day, as most historians seek to distance history from faith, biographers still appeal to Gladstone's Christian principles in explaining the course and zeal of his remarkable life in politics.

Gladstone's public persona thrived upon this conjunction of political and religious drama. He was a consummate politician who succeeded through more than 60 years of political rough-and-tumble without leaving the impression that mere political ends had been his goal. It is an unusual combination, and may be seen as a fulfillment of the great but difficult gospel admonition to be "shrewd as serpents, and as innocent as doves" (Matt. 10:16).

But the public self is not the whole self. The heart of every good biography is the heart of its subject, and this part of the anatomy is notoriously resistant to explanation. Fortunately for posterity, Gladstone's conscience compelled him to take literally Paul's instruction to be careful how he walked, "making the most" of his time (Eph. 5:16). In order to ensure that he did so, Gladstone compiled the incomparable diary that comes as close to a ground map of the actual steps he took as any biographer is likely to find, and that has enticed scholars with the hope of uncovering some key to Gladstone's personality.

Gladstone's diary is exceptional for three reasons. First, it is unusually detailed. During seven decades he recorded meeting or corresponding with 22,000 people and reading some 20,000 published works. Second, it is unusually thorough. From the time he began his entries, Gladstone scarcely missed a day until surgery for cataracts in 1894 forced him from his daily routine. And third, it is wonderfully free of the self-referential cant that almost invariably invades the soul of anyone who sits to "reflect" upon each day's activities. Had Gladstone been more sensitive, he might have been a better author, husband, and father, but he certainly would have been a poorer politician. And his diary would have been, like so many others, a facade for his true intentions rather than a framework upon which they might be constructed. Because it is a virtually complete record of his adult life, the reader has a fair opportunity of judging the relative influence of principle versus circumstance, and of tracing the development of his values across time.

The diaries contain much suggestive material, especially the handful of introspective reflections that Gladstone normally eschewed and that in profusion would have become formalities. Usually on his birthday and on the final day of each year, and occasionally in times of stress, he would examine himself before God as an act of accountancy. Yet it was no accident that Gladstone recorded so few of these paradoxical confessions.

He was always prone to doubt his ability to determine exactly when he had crossed the line between good and evil. At 20 he mourned his sinfulness, yet admitted that his consciousness of sin was "not a pervading nor a living belief." At 39 he acknowledged a sinful attraction to erotic literature, yet wondered at his willingness to plead before God "innocent and useful ends." Though he wished for spiritual insight, at 83 he still prayed that God might "at the length" give him "a true self knowledge. I have it not yet."

Although scholars have rightly made much of Gladstone's confessions, it must be remembered that they were adjunctive to the real purpose of the diary as an objective accounting of time spent. Over and over he pointed to the difficulty in fastening upon the definitive explanations that he sought in his self-examinations. After 70 years of attempts, he closed his diary with the naked statement of an epistemological truth that is usually clearer to a person's biographer than to the person himself: "it is so easy to write [or examine], but to write honestly nearly impossible."

The reader of Gladstone's diary is thus placed in an immediate quandary. If Gladstone was sensible of his inability or unwillingness to discern and portray the essential features of his inner life, how far can his confessions be trusted? We must acknowledge the largely equivocal and partial nature of his revelations. And the implications of this for the genre of biography are immense, for seldom have readers been given greater opportunities for knowing a whole man. Generally speaking, what cannot be known of Gladstone cannot be known of anyone.

In his biography of Gladstone, despite the abundance of evidence, Colin Matthew deliberately evades the questions of inner motivation that so many biographers feel compelled to answer ("Gladstone," 2 vols., Oxford University Press, 1989, 1995). In the preface to the second volume, Matthew justifies the reticence of his "interpretive essay" with a quotation from Gladstone's own article on the Italian poet Leopardi:

There is scarcely a single moral action of a single man of which other men can have such a knowledge, in its ultimate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and the real determining cause of its merits, as to warrant their pronouncing a conclusive judgment upon it.

Matthew is on solid ground in citing Gladstone against the biographer but herein belies his later assertion that the Grand Old Man "represented Victorianism more completely than any other person in public life."

Indeed, to the extent that one can identify an overarching Victorianism, Gladstone's refusal to judge moral character neared the antithesis of the prevailing mood of his day. As Josef Altholz has observed, "what separates us from the Victorians is, not so much the difference in our moral judgments, as their readiness to make moral judgments and our readiness to suspend them." Scholars often have obscured Gladstone's lack of moralizing by highlighting his morality, but the two are not the same. According to Morley, "he strove to use all the powers of his own genius and the powers of the state for moral purposes and religious." But he seldom moralized about others. Instead, Gladstone marshaled rational arguments and utilized practical means to accomplish what he believed to be the moral good.

Gladstone was unusual in managing to remain morally earnest without embracing either a narrowly dogmatic faith or a systematic rationalism. The title of his "The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture" (1890) seems to tell otherwise. In the first chapter he made a ringing affirmation that the Scriptures,

though assailed by camp, by battery, and by mine . . . are nevertheless a house builded upon a rock, and that rock impregnable; that the weapon of offense, which shall impair their efficiency for aiding in the redemption of mankind, has not yet been forged; that the Sacred Canon, which it took (perhaps) two thousand years from the accumulations of Moses down to the acceptance of the Apocalypse to construct, is like to wear out the storms and the sunshine of the world, and all the wayward aberrations of humanity, not merely for a term as long, but until time shall be no more.

"And yet," he continued, "upon the very threshold, I embrace, in what I think a substantial sense, one of the great canons of modern criticism, which teaches us that the Scriptures are to be treated like any other book in the trial of their title."

Despite his high regard for the Bible, Gladstone held to a higher mystery of God, who had for his own purposes wrought in "twilight instead of a noonday blaze." God had provided sufficient, rather than perfect, knowledge, and the "question what constitutes that sufficiency is a matter no more to be judged of by us in relation to the Scriptures, than in relation to any other part of the Divine dispensations, on all of which the Almighty appears to have reserved His judgment to Himself." Gladstone did not doubt the day of judgment, nor did he take it lightly, but he refused to believe that any man--himself included--could be certain of the morality of any actions but those most obviously proscribed by command and prescribed by injunction. Deeply committed to the Bible as God's holy and indispensable truth, he nevertheless found it impossible to square literal interpretations with his understanding of the nature of man, or to apply them to the necessities of the parliamentary system of government.

He stood upon an impregnable rock, then, but one that nevertheless moved in God's mysterious providence. This possibility of movement was fundamental to the development of that characteristic moral and political flexibility that publicly infuriated Gladstone's opponents. It also contributed to an interior moral ambiguity. He became the ardent admirer of pagan Greeks as pseudo-Christians without Christ; a defender of the atheist Bradlaugh's right to sit in Parliament and influence the course of British life; and of the cannibal Ashantis' right to eat whomever they pleased. "You will be amused," he wrote to his colonial secretary, "at my pleading, so to speak, on behalf of human sacrifices." He continued:

I am of course all for getting rid of them. But:--1. They are not crimes under the moral law as recognized in Africa. 2. They were not crimes under the moral law as recognized by the most civilized nations of antiquity. . . . 3. They were only put down by the influence of Christianity, & that slowly. 4. Within no great number of years we had a British officer at Dahomey on the occasion of the sacrifices--which I think, at least in part, he saw. Gladstone had none of the intellectual detachment that, in seeing all sides, often led to political impotence. Nor could he abide a rigid dogmatism that the historical record had convinced him would be equally ineffective.

The same distinctive mixture of the orthodox and the unorthodox characterized Gladstone's attitudes toward marriage and love. While his relationship with his wife, Catherine, was a public model of the spiritual love of the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians, it lacked the erotic passion that, for better or worse, Gladstone recognized as a vital part of human nature. He believed that his body was God's habitation and Catherine's province. But he never quite convinced himself that the romantic and sexual impulses that he felt for pretty prostitutes were ignoble when channeled properly. Thus from the age of 18 to 85 he deliberately courted temptation in spiritually ministering to streetwalkers, and he was sometimes mortified that his desires were unholy.

In 1864, he met Laura Thistlethwayte, a kept woman in her youth who had married a country gentleman and become a spiritual lecturer following her conversion to an ethical and nondenominational form of evangelical Christianity. Casual acquaintance escalated to passion when, in 1869, she finally used the word "love" in a perfumed letter and sent him a manuscript copy of her erotic autobiography, in Gladstone's mind as fantastic as any from "The Arabian Nights." The lovers gradually cooled down. Though the affair was almost certainly unconsummated, it was not platonic, and Gladstone often wore a silver ring that Laura had given him and he had had inscribed.

Gladstone would not embrace a narrow, pietistic conception of God's creation that essentially denied scope for the human imperatives of passion, pride, and honor. Intellectually, he grounded his theology in Bishop Butler's coldly rational "balance of probability," which nevertheless allowed him to incorporate into his Christianity any doctrine of which he, in honest striving, could reasonably convince himself. From there he constructed what appeared to many experts to be the most fantastic interpretations of Homeric poetry, in which noble Greeks imbued with traces of Christian truth were desperately striving to perfect their honor without the aid of Christ.

Gladstone's commitment in time to the study of Homeric themes was enormous. He seldom allowed it to interfere with political work, but it often took precedence over his family. This does not suggest selfishness alone. Instead, it marks a desperate pursuit of some rational explanation for the seeming ambiguity of his moral sensibility.

Homeric study was for Gladstone's theology what Laura Thistlethwayte was for his sexuality--an object of passion that enabled him to reconcile his ascetic Christian heritage and his frank confrontation with humanity. Matthew's assessment of Gladstone's fascination with Thistlethwayte cannot be bettered. She was "educated enough to understand something of his mind, young enough to offer beauty, religious enough to seem redeemed, but exotic enough to stand outside the ring of society women with whom he usually corresponded on religion." All the essential features of this formulation equally apply to his passion for Homeric literature: its study required an educated mind; it dealt with the refracted beauty of God's work; it was redeemed by a noble striving for the essence of God's early revelation; yet it was exotic enough to stand outside the fusty and narrow religious traditions that placed so many limits upon the mysterious majesty of God. Without that striving to reconcile divine revelation and earthly sensation, Gladstone would have been reduced to the practice of a perfunctory religion unworthy of the majesty of God, and this he was unwilling to do.

If these peripheral aspects of Gladstone's theology would not have been welcome from the pulpits of most Nonconformist chapels, the core was sound. He never doubted the atoning work of Christ or the priceless value of God's Word, and thus he wrote with a dogmatic conviction that appealed to Protestant believers who found little mystery in God's handiwork. And in any case, the religious world of Victorian England was notoriously fragmented between Nonconformists, Anglicans (high church, low church, and broad), and Roman Catholics. If Gladstone did not fit neatly into any category, Christians accepted the fact of diversity. The important point was that he had not secretly gone agnostic. The striking moral quality of his public pronouncements, and publication of articles and books like "Proem to Genesis: A Plea for a Fair Trial" (1886) and "Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler" (1896), left the public in no doubt about that.

Gladstone's greatness is most often situated in the magnitude of his political achievement or in the morality with which he ennobled his profession. But these are not uncommon characteristics in great men. More unusual was Gladstone's ability to encompass in one soul both the prescriptive revelations of the Bible and the infinite range of God's possible augmentations of Scripture. In a lifelong and Herculean effort, he succeeded in constructing a marvelous world in which the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob cohabited with the Greek pantheon; where political results were the test of moral principles; and where the reformed courtesan took an honored place by the devoted wife. If no one could quite follow in Gladstone's steps, he chose not to judge, and expected to be judged by no one but the Master on the final day of reckoning.

Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./BOOKS & CULTURE

July/August 1996, Vol. 2, No. 4, Page 14

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